Palaces for the people: How and of what should public buildings persuade citizens in a democracy?

This chapter asks how a commitment to popular rule should express itself in architecture. If the often monumental buildings housing democratic legislatures are the people's "palaces," what should a palace for the people look like? How can such a building persuade the people that it is really theirs? Or is that idea a path to the problematic image of a single, homogenous people, and to the "stormings" of parliaments, with "mobs" incited by populists? The chapter breaks this question into four elements: the relationship of democracy to monumentality; the possible associations between democracy and various building styles; the question of which iconography best promotes democratic values; and the spaces provided by buildings devoted to democracy and the scripts they make possible. The chapter concludes that if there is no uniquely democratic style, material, or iconography, it does not follow that democracy is somehow beyond all representation and embodiment.